


fear the reaper

by ScrivenerSavannah



Category: Redwall Series - Brian Jacques
Genre: Gen, like immediately post, post-Mossflower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 03:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrivenerSavannah/pseuds/ScrivenerSavannah
Summary: Nightmares never allow rest. Written for week two of Redwall fic month. Prompt: Nightmares.





	fear the reaper

The furred bulk of the wildcat loomed over her opponent, a mad green light in her eyes. Armed though she was with only the weapons nature had granted her—tooth, claw, and the savage strength and cunning of a predator—she nevertheless outmatched the small warrior who had chosen to set himself against her. A tiny figure clad in bright armor like liquid silver in the gloaming, the warrior mouse stood upon the bank. Dark waters to the left, dark forest to the right, he faced the wildcat. He faced the wildcat, and he did not back down.

They clashed, once, twice. The sword pierced a paw, claws ripped helmet from head and cast it into the shallows. Blood and water turned the shore of the lake to mud, churned to chaos by paws. The mouse staggered. Fell. Dug his sword into the ground and struggled up right again.

The green light in the cat’s slitted eyes flickered for the first time with a breath of fear.

Again they met in a flurry of blood and fur, both sorely wounded, neither about to back down. The cat struck the warrior’s back, deepening wounds she had already inflicted; the mouse cut into her side, the blade meeting the ribone. She heaved him into the water, snatched up a piece of driftwood to push him further in, but he came at her again, again, again—

_Bloodied but unbowed—_

_The mouse who would not lie down and die—_

The contest had never been fair. Trapped, the cat crouched down, paced at the waters edge, retreating, afraid and retreating—dark water at her back, Dark Forest before her. Retreating as the water and the mouse advanced from both sides. Retreating until water and fear surged up and dragged her down to drown, filled her mouth, her eyes, her nose, filled her lungs until she _couldn’t breathe—_

He thrashed awake, gasping for air, writhing like a madbeast against the paws holding him down. They vanished, and he rolled over, curled tight, and panted for air, eyes squeezed tight. There was a hiss and the smell of burning—a candle.

“Nightmare?” A single tight nod. Paws rubbed against his back, and he unwound slowly. “The same one?”

“Aye.”

She clucked her tongue against her teeth, sounding like a fretting mother. That as much as anything coaxed him into relaxing, rolling over to face her, their breath mingling. Outside the leaves of Mossflower wood whispered in the late summer wind, but inside, in this tiny island of peace and warmth, blankets cocooned around both mice, he could ignore the world. “I’m all right,” he whispered.

“So is Martin,” Columbine whispered, nuzzling his cheek. “Mother Germaine says he’ll be on his feet in another week. He lived, Gonff, and so did you.”

“I… know,” Gonff said quietly, and sighed. “I know.”

He’d been the first to find him, the first to see the crumpled and collapsed form—the first, too, to track the pawprints and reconstruct the battle on the shore. He’d only wondered later at the fact that Tsarmina’s tracks went into the water backwards while Martin’s had stayed on the bank. He’d wondered why that was, why she had retreated, what might have scared a wildcat, a tyrant, a cruel madbeast like Tsarmina so badly that she drowned herself rather than face it—

He’d stopped wondering later, when he’d overheard the Salamandastron hares whispering to each other. That Martin had fought, had won, had _survived,_ and how odd, how strange that truly was.

_The mouse who fought like a great male badger—_

_Bloodwrath—_

Gonff shivered, and hugged Columbine closer to him, burying his face in her shoulder. No, he couldn’t say that much. Let Columbine think it was fear of Martin’s death that brought the imagined scene to his sleeping mind again and again. There was truth in that, after all, though not the truth entire. Better to fear Martin’s death than the Death that walked so quietly and easily beside his friend.

Outside, the trees whispered to each other, sparks from the fire flicking upwards to wink out of existence like stillborn stars.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sorry.


End file.
